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GURPS Prime Directive
GURPS Prime Directive is a Powered by GURPS set in the Star Fleet Universe, a variant of the canonal Star Trek Universe. The Star Fleet Universe The Star Fleet Universe is a mixture of TOS, TAS and fan sources up to 1979 creating a timeline more filled with war then the then canonal timeline. The Star Fleet Universe used the then canonal Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology and Y(year) counting from the first contact of Humans and Vulcans to follow the tradition of making exactly where in the future Star Trek was set fuzzy. However, that book put the five year mission of Enterprise as taking place 2207-2212 (Y155 to Y160) which is no longer canon (it now being 2265-2270). The reality is the Star Fleet Universe timeline has many issues making totally it incompatible with the current canonal one but per the canon that existed in 1979 and the fan stuff added later it makes perfect sense. As a result one can only go by what appeared in the Original Series, the Animated Series, Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology and supplemental fan information for the canon of this setting. Everything else is off the table. Star Fleet Universe Tech Levels Both the 3rd and 4th editions of GURPS Prime Directive used the 3e Tech Scale. More over they highball the TLs. The Original Star Trek series (TOS) provides a lot of details regarding Federation Technology. The following uses the lowest TL needed to have the advancement. 3e TLs TOS Transportation: TL9. The transporter is the oddball at TL 14. TOS Weapons & Armor: All over the TL9-11 range. Starships and Stunners are 9, disrupters are 10 and force screens, tractors beams and antimatter missiles are 11. TOS Power: Antimatter is TL10. TOS Medicine: Mccoy comments that Federation medicine can deal with every organ of the body but the brain ("Menagerie" and "Spock's Brain"). The Compendium II notes brain transplant as a TL8 (likely late TL8) development. Similarly there is no evidence for and plenty against TL 9's panimmuity in Kirk's time ("Requiem for Methuselah", "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky", "Journey to Eden"), no evidence of any form of braintaping until the TNG era, and Longevity is another TL9 development missing from Kirk's time ("Deadly Years"). There is one TL9 hiccup in all of this; Mccoy uses something akin to Suspend on Kirk in "Amok Time" which is before "Spock's Brain" and "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky" (where large amounts of medical knowledge was gained). So the conclusion from all this is in Kirk's time TOS Medicine is 8 with one 8+1 "Triox compound". Scotty indicates that the Star Trek timeline deviated from our own because transistors were the technology of choice for spaceships in the 1990s"Space Seed" and there is no reference to computer chips. So TOS is TL(6+3) to TL(7+2) but only if you ignore "Piece of the Action", "Patterns of Force", and Worlds of the Federation. 4e TL In the GURPS Tech Level scale large hunks of TOS tech wound up as Superscience: FTL travel, transporter, force-field technology, disintegrators (Phasers) and their crude time travel. This removes these from figuring out what the TL is as superscience can be any TL. The only direct reference to how powerful antimatter is ('less than one ounce (~28.6 grams) of antimatter is more powerful than ten thousand cobalt bombs'"Obsession") actually Italic text''does provide some information. A Joule is kg*c^2, so assuming ''total conversion one gets 5.14087960.0286*2*(299792458)^2 PJpetajoule; 10^15 Joules for "real" antimatter. Tsar Bomba (tested 30 October 1961) produced 240 PJ or nearly 48 times that of the antimatter that 'ripped away half a planet's atmosphere'. Ergo Star Trek antimatter is superscience just as it is for Britannica-5 (though for different reasons) "City on the Edge of Forever" and "Piece of the Action" further refute a higher then TL9. Spock must be able to build mnemonic memory circuit able to interface with a tricorder with unfamiliar and inferior TL6 materialsAt TL9 this is base -5 with an additional -2 minimum for unfamiliar materials, and whatever penalties using inferior materials incurs. So -7 to begin with and possibly higher. At TL11 it simply would not happen as the penalty total is too high. This assumes Spock doesn't have related Wildcard Skills. and more importantly Iotians who took 100 years to go from TL5 to TL6 even with books on how to build TL6 equipmentThe culture was pulled from a King James sized book called Chicago Mobs of the Twenties which may have added tot he details needed to recreated 1920s technology. The Iotians are imitative not inventive. must be able to take apart one communicator, learn how a part called a transtator works, and be able to reproduce Federation Tech in a "few years"."A communicator, built using transtator physics, was discovered by the Iotian inhabitants. They quickly abandoned their mobster and jumped at the opportunity presented by the new treasure. The next vessel to orbit Iotie found what at first appeared to be a Federation starbase, complete with uniformed personal and communication Starfleet frequencies - Worlds of the Federation 108 Since TL four levels higher then your own is impossible to study much less reproduceBasic Set 168 the highest non superscience Federation tech in this case can be is TL9. Non SuperScience Federation Tech This matches other non superscience tech the Federation had in the TOS era: * Hibernation Chamber:"Space Seed" TL9 * Pneumohypo:throughout the TOS era TL9 * Diagnostic Bed:throughout the TOS era TL9 * Brainscannerthroughout the TOS era: TL9 Non SuperScience Non Federation Tech These are examples of non superscience tech that is not possessed by the TOS/TAS Federation. * Androids: TL9"What are Little Girls Made of?""I, Mudd""Return to Tomorrow" * Bioroids and Biofab: TL10"Shore Leave", "Once Upon A Planet"; the civilization that built the Shore Leave planet whose last member is now dead. * Brain Transplants, normal: TL9"I, Mudd""Spock's Brain" * Brain Transplants, nanosurgery based: TL10"Spock's Brain" * Destructive Uploading: TL10The Klingon Mind Scanner/Ripper in "Errand of Mercy" * Non-Destructive Uploading: TL10"What are Little Girls Made Of?"The Klingon Mind Scanner/Ripper in "Errand of Mercy" The conclusion is the Federation is TL(6+3)^ to TL(7+2)^ due to the transtator (TL6^ per "Piece of the Action") Wealth in Star Trek It is clear from various comments that even in Kirk's era the Federation is a Post-scarcity economy. Kirk even states that they can make diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires by the ton and so they are worthless to him and his crew."Catspaw" The only items that seem have any real value are things that take time to build (starships) or cannot be manufactured via the transporter (dilithium). Dilithium is a particular pain as it is so valuable that the miners of it can, if they were so inclined and Harry Mudd believed, buy planets."Mudd's Women" This effectively breaks the TL starting wealth rules. Star Fleet Universe divergences from OTL While much of this has been retconned in the movies and later versions of Star Trek this is how things were regarding canon in 1979 which is the foundation of the Star Fleet Universe. The Immortal In 3834 BCE in the area of Mesopotamia a man was born who quickly discovered he was immortal via "instant tissue regeneration coupled with some perfect form of biological renewal." He would become many famous people including Solomon, Alexander, Lazarus, Methuselah, Merlin, Abramson, Leonardo da Vinci, and Johannes Brahms. Ancient Times Two groups of aliens came to earth. One group who arrived c 2700 BCE became the Olympian gods"Who Mourns for Adonais?" and the other tried to follow the ideal of Plato while hiding themselve among earth people."Plato's Stepchildren" Both groups of aliens left Earth after the collapse of the Greek civilization. Rome Had No Sun Worshipers Stated by McCoy."Bread and Circuses" In OTL Rome, in fact, had several cults that revered sun gods including Helios Apollo and Sol from the Greeks, Mithras from the Persians, and Elagabalus from the Syrians. Then from the 3rd century on there was Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") which may have been a new sect or a revival of an old one. So two of these gods in English would have been called "Sun". 18th Century The Preservers visited Earth and relocated some Indian tribes to a distant world."The Paradise Syndrome" 1888 A being of pure thought and pure energy becomes Jack the Ripper."A Wolf in the Fold" WWI In the TOS reality only 6 million died in WWI."Bread and Circuses" In OTL 15 to 19 million died (9 to 11 million military personal with about 6 million civilian casualties) in WWI. 1932 The energy being kills 7 women in Shanghai, China."A Wolf in the Fold". This could have happen in OTL and forgotten given the chaos surrounding the January 28 Incident WWII In the TOS reality only 11 million died in WWII."Bread and Circuses" In OTL the range is 50 to more then 80 million. (50–56 million directly killed by the warwith an an additional estimated 19 to 28 million deaths from war-related disease and famine.) The Prelude to the Eugenic Wars The creation of supermen via selective breeding who would take over 40 nations in 1993"Space Seed" means the program went back at least 2 generations and likely more. At 20 years a generation this puts one in the 1950s at the latest though earlier seems more logical. The Nazis Were Close to Inventing the Atomic Bomb and Would Use the V2 Rocket to Deliver it. Spock states this in "City on the Edge of Forever" as a summation of what his tricorder has recorded of the alternate timeline McCoy would create. In OTL the Nazis didn't even start seriously look at the atom bomb or V2 until they started loosing the war.NOVA: Nazis and the Bomb. In fact Germany only started looking at atom bombs in 1942 putting them three years behind the US program which had started in 1939 and they never caught up--they only got to an early part the 1942 stage of Manhattan project in 1945. From what we can put together the best Germany could have produced in 1946 was a conventionally powered "dirty bomb" : "At best this would have been far less destructive than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Rather it is an example of scientists trying to make any sort of weapon they could in order to help stave off defeat." NOVA: Nazis and the Bomb. The V2 has even more problems as in OTL when Hitler was first shown the plans for the V2 in late 1941 he was dismissive of the V2 as essentially an artillery shell with a longer range and much higher costIrons, Roy. Hitler's terror weapons: The price of vengeance. p. 181. It was not until 1944 with German moral waning in the face of defeat after defeat that Hitler decided on building the V2. Also the V2 simply didn't have the ability to carry an A-bomb; the V2 had the ability to carry a 2,200 pounds payload while Little Boy (smallest A-bomb of the time) was 9,700 pounds. This is why Stalin put so many resources into duplicating the Superfortress instead of simply copying the V2 and slapping an A-bomb on top of it. Nazi Germany was the most efficient state Earth ever knew This claim by John Gill"Patterns of Force", who is supposed to be a major historian, is total nonsense by OTL. In OTL per the 1960 book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich the Nazi hierarchy was a web of competition, with many high officials bitterly opposed to each other. Consequently, their jurisdictions often overlapped and/or collided. Hence, this conflict actually reduced or even, in some cases, completely negated governmental efficiency. The Integrated Circuit Many Have Not Existed Clear Into the 1990s Scotty comments about 1990s spaceships using bulky and solid transistor units"Space Seed" implying the integrated circuit (successfully demonstrated in 1958) didn't exist in TOS timeline as late as the 1990s. 1967 The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 is not signed allowing the United States to launch an orbital nuclear warhead platform to counter a similar launch by other powers in 1968. In OTL only the USSR launched such platforms as part of the “Fractional Orbital Bombardment System” or FOBS."Assignment: Earth" 1968 The United States efforts to counter FOBS is interfered with by Gary Seven to scare it and the USSR out of the arms race. Thanks to interaction with the Enterprise the US version of FOBS explodes exactly one hundred and four miles above the Earth."Assignment: Earth" Moral issues of the Prime Directive In the TOS era the Prime Directive was not as rigidly followed as it would be in the TNG era where it was effectively dogma and was too often used to short circuit actual moral choice.Examination of Star Trek's Prime DirectiveThe Prime Directive: Star Trek's Doctrine of Moral Laziness Time Travel It was established that time travel the TOS reality (and all the later non Abrams Timeline successors) works under Plastic time"City on the Edge of Forever" which provides an excellent explanation for any and all continuity issues: they are the product of time travel meddling. Other Star Trek Timelines Star Trek has several different "official" timelines: *Canonal: Live action TV series (TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager) + movies + "Yesteryear" of TAS. It is not Prime. *Kelvin Star Trek (the Abrams movies): the product of the 2005 Viacom split where Paramount got the rights to the movies but CBS owned the TV series and toys based on Canonal Star Trek. To allow Paramount to make more Star Trek a special license requiring significant deviation (thought to be around 25% different) from Canonal Star Trek was created and leased to Paramount.Star Trek Discovery and the Return of Picard: The Controversies Behind The Scenes and Star Trek Discovery: The Prime Deception – CBS and Paramount Viacom Rights Explained *Hybrid: For complicated reasons Star Trek Discovery was done under the Paramount license which is why despite being said to be part of canonal Star Trek it looks like it belongs to the Kelvin timeline. The so called Prime timeline is also part of this. The odd man out in all this is Star Trek Enterprise which thanks to the Temporal Cold War ignores many elements seen in TOS and TNG. Where exactly it fit (or even if it can fit) is unknown. There is hope that the remerger of CBS and Paramount will fix things but what Star Trek will look like post merger is unknown. Related Material * Federation Commander **Star Fleet Universe Timeline * Star Trek Writers Guide - the reference guide writers and editors of the original series were supposed to use. * GURPS Klingons (Warehouse 23) * GURPS Romulans (Warehouse 23) * GURPS Federation (Warehouse 23) * Why Does Starfleet use Phasers? (youtube video) * GURPS Star Trek (fan site) * Prime Directive Online (last updated Aug 30, 2016; internet archive) * Trekyards EP26 - Fasa/Starfleet Battles with Josh Spencer References Category:GURPS Books Category:3rd Edition Category:4th Edition Category:Licensed worlds Category:Powered by GURPS